5 tips on stress reduction

Heya my awesome tribe

Personal Trainer Durham

I am going to talk about stress and give you 5 top tips to reduce stress, before we do that i will explain why stress is so bad for our health and weight.

Not sure you know this but stress is one of the biggest killers and even CHDs and strokes can be caused by stress.  We are starting to believe that stress is the foundation of most fatalities, think about it.

Obesity which can cause diabetes, heart disease and strokes can be caused directly and in directly by stress.  How can stress keep us fat or make us obese? 

Directly - hormones

Release of the stress hormone cortisol which can stop the fat burning process and hold onto the fat, great for survival of a caveman over the winter months but life threatening for stressed out modern people.  Also when you are stressed you will be most likely be in the sympathetic nervous system which is the flight or fight nervous system when blood is shunted to the limbs ready to run away or fight to survive.  This blood should be in your gut to aid with digestion and fat burning.
Indirectly - eating

So indirectly is more common and more noticeable than the hormonal effects of stress on us, so you are stressed and you go for junk food to make yourself feel better or even worse you starve yourself as you are not hungry.  Both have a very negative effect on your metabolism and keeping fat off in the future.

The medical definition of stress is, “the perception of a real or imagined threat to your body or your ego.” It could be a tiger chasing you or your belief that your spouse is mad at you (even if he or she is not). Whether it is real or imagined, when you perceive something as stressful, it creates the same response in the body.

Years ago stress would be a productive thing for the caveman because it would shunt blood to help a caveman catch his food or escape from a threat or during the winter months it would retain fat to help him survive the winter.  Unfortunately 100,000 generations as a hunter gatherer and 10 generations of modern agriculture our brains haven't developed enough to distinguish actual and perceived threat.

You feel stressed or threatened and a sudden influx of adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones floods your system, raising your heart rate, increasing your blood pressure, making your blood more likely to clot, damaging your brain’s memory centre, increasing fat storage, and generally wreaking havoc on your body.

My tips are as follows and work for myself and my clients: 

1. Move. A great way to reduce stress is enjoyable exercise, a bike ride, horse ride, yoga or a nice run in the woods.  Remember though your brain still sees exercise as stress, it is a stress on your body and mind so if the exercise is too tough or competitive it could have the opposite effect.  For myself a nice mountain bike ride through the woods on a hot day de-stresses excellently.
2. Breathe. Most of us hold our breath often or breathe high in the chest, anxious breaths. Deep, slow, full breaths have a profound affect on resetting the stress response.  Your brain can feel in threat or stress and often some big slow breaths breathing through the diaphragm is the first and quickest way of bringing you back into the correct relaxed nervous system and de stressing and helping you relax or sleep.
3. Sunshine. This is the life giving rays of the sun, the vitamin D from the sun has been proven to make you feel happy and has been know to treat depression.  I have been using the sun actively for improving my clients self esteem and morale for a long time now, normally a bit of exercise or cycling in the sun.  15 minutes of sun a day is recommended for good health, get some real sun on your skin each time.
4. Sleep. Lack of sleep increases stress hormones. Get your eight hours no matter what.  Take a nap if you missed your sleep. Prioritise sleep.
5. Think Differently. Practice the art of noticing stress, noticing how your thinking makes you stressed. Practice taking deep breaths and letting go of worry. Don't let bad people let you get down, ignore what other people think.  Always think positively i actually try and take a positive with everything i do, every time i mess up i think of the benefits.

So to summarise stress is a real big deal and could mean the difference between fat or fit or dead or alive.  I believe that i am the only Personal Trainer in County Durham who thinks of stress as the number one component when working with my clients.  If you would like some more info on what i do please check out the rest of my blogs on here or on my website www.itrainhard.co.uk.

I am running a get fit and lose fat quick for your holidays program with almost unlimited personal training and nutrition support for one month for just £500.  I only have 5 places and one has just gone so if you like how i operate please get in touch ASAP to get my help and support.

Glenn(the stress go to guy North East) Hill

07983570574    01913874222

The life of a unique Personal Trainer

Glenn Hill

This blog is all about what i do as a Personal Trainer and coach that, perhaps is a little different to the others you may find.

You can decide.. i am best known for running a ladies gym, hair salon and being a specialist female only personal trainer. Actually my speciality is helping ladies above 30 years old get much fitter, lose some weight but mainly get their heads in a much better place.

I have had a lot of success at this and i put it down to the other stuff i do and the knowledge and experience that gives me.

I have given my PT clients a break for two weeks now, well actually i designed an online training plan and gave them my drop box password which has all my digital classes and challenged them to get fitter even without me.??

As i am away taking soldiers from all walks of life mountain biking down some of the scariest trails Uk has to offer.  So far trails around North Wales and North West Scotland.  The benefit of becoming proficient at something difficult and scary like mountain biking is mainly because the process takes you out of your comfort zone and helps build you up as a person.  It also helps build a sense of team work, self reliance, determination, mental strength, physical strength and fitness.

These attributes can help anyone in any other circumstance including work, thats why big business spends millions sending their workers on team building training.

I am taking a group on a Biking course putting them through their paces and teaching them skills and techniques on arduous terrain.

Today was awesome the group and myself navigated around loch Morlich high on the cairngorm road and cycled up a huge hill to Rothymurchus Lodge(old army lodge high up in the Cairngorms) we then technically descended our way down a steep single track descent called the Lairig Ghru.

These activities all have an element of risk and sometimes someone gets hurt, and yesterday was one of those days.  I have been coaching mountain biking for a number of years now and have never had a student in hospital, that is until yesterday.

The student was a little un-fitter than the remainder of the group and the last descent of the day she took a tumble and injured her hand.  We were not sure if it was broken, i quickly assessed for mobility of wrist and hand it seemed ok which was a positive sign.  So i calmed her down, gave her a sip of water and an energy gel and then put a support sling around her to support and elevate the hand/wrist.  We then evacuated her to the nearest A&E which was Inverness and waited hours watching all the usual druggies and drunks coming in and out.  Eventually she was treated and we found out it was only severe bruising which was great news.

So that's just a couple of my days, the experiences my students  recieve on these epic days are amazing and life changing and it's these experiences and knowledge which i take back to my awesome clients that makes all the difference when it comes to helping them and making what i do a little different.

Hey though...Mountain Biking isn't just for fit soldiers, biking around the woods has become a great method of de stressing and helping with the fitness and morale needs of atleast one of my PT clients. "She loves it now and is much fitter and happier"

Anyhoo i just though i would share a couple of days in the life of a unique Personal trainer.

Glenn(Adventure Coach Personal Trainer) Hill


Losing weight and feeling great in County Durham doesn't come easier than this.

teaching the NHS about health in South Tyneside Hospital

Personal trainer chester le street

So not sent a blog in a while, this one is about me and my grumpy assistant teaching the health professionals about health.

I have been giving out some freebies again, this time trying to help a great bunch who are a brilliant resource, the NHS.

Nursing staff and other hospital staff are renownded for being over worked and under paid, so i thought it was my duty to help them out.  I thought a free plan with some clever knowledge, some short exercise blasts and a great weight loss nutrition plan all of which can be done at home or in the work place.

My aim was to help people change a unhealthy habit for healthy ones and if they lose some weight in the process then that is great.

So the staff of South Tyneside Hospital have received my chose to lose campaign, done over three different times to ensure i can help as much staff as possible. 

• Talk about metabolism, after burn and golden hour
• Indroducing the plan and ourselves
• Demo fitness session
• Free nutrition plan
• Free home exercise plan
• Free weight loss recipe book
• Free motivation for weight loss ebook
• Free metabolism ebook
• Free alcohol ebook

They weigh and measure themselves at the start of the challenge and at the end.  Ta Da they lose weight, feel great and learn some stuff in the package.

Habits hopefully changed for good.


Glenn (helping the north east get fit)Hill














Check out my page or phone 01913874222

This is about the rotten apple at the bottom of the barrel

Personal trainer chester le street

So i am a firm believer of being genuine, honest, helpful and caring to my members and PT clients and they would all vouch for me on this statement.  I also dont like to hate as it has a negative effect on me and not them and therefore they have achieved their aim.

Recently some one used a social media review site to spout a load of malicious, hateful lies about me as a person and my gym.

Ofcourse no names here as it wouldn't be fair as she couldn't defend herself.  The hurtful thing here is that personally i have helped her in the past with financial asistance and other business related things again i cant say too much as you would know who i am talking about.
I explained my case on FB again not mentioning names etc for the best word to describe someone who would do this and the answers that came back were interesting... lots i couldn't put on here but here is some:

• Bitter
• Pathetic
• Bumder
• Jealous
• Small minded
• Ignorant
• Sad lives
• Hateful

Must mention here that the people who left comments are my friends and clients etc who know me and have my interests at heart, however i agree one hundred percent.

You work VERY hard to be the best you can be for your family, colleagues,clients and members and then some insert your word___________ tries to ruin your reputation by slandering you on social media.

The beauty of this is though i have seen the response from the people that noticed it and it has made the person responsible look very sad and un-professional and done the opposite for me. 

Glenn (the go to guy) Hill

Please come to our open day to see all of our new services and stuff and win some goodies on the 23rd July 2014.